Volume 7-6 October 2011.

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Title
A Critical Review of the Current Situation of Teaching ESP in the Iranian Higher Education Institutions

Authors
Samad Mirza Suzani (Ph.D. Candidate)
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran

Lotfollah Yarmohammadi (Ph.D.)
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran

Mortaza Yamini (Ph.D.)
Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Biodata
Samad Mirza Suzani is a Ph.D candidate of TEFL at the Department of English, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran. He has presented in several Int'l conferences including SAMT conferences in 2005 and 2006 and IELTI4 and TELLSI8 in 2007 and 2010 and Asia TEFL in 2011. He has published a book on translation and another on ESP(SAMT Publications). He has also published several articles in the Translation Studies Journal. His fields of interest are mainly Translation Studies, CDA, ESP, and Curriculum design.

Lotfollah Yarmohammadi is a Professor of English language and Linguistics at the Department of English, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran. He has taught to both native and non-native speakers of Persian in different universities in Iran and abroad. He has published a large number of papers in different int'l journals. He has also published a prolific number of books on linguistics, syntax, discourse, and CDA in both English and Persian.

Mortaza Yamini is an active member of the Center of Excellence in L2 Reading & Writing who has taught for over 35 years at Department of Language and Linguistics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. He is pursuing his teaching profession, offering some graduate courses at Shiraz University and the Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch. He has also published a good number of articles and books on second language learning and teaching, testing and other areas of applied linguistics in local and int'l journals.

Abstract
At present, almost all undergraduates in the Iranian higher educational institutions have to go through an obligatory course known as English for Specific Purposes (ESP). However, the results of the present qualitative study indicated that the logic behind the ESP is still unknown to most undergraduates. To this end, data were collected from both semi-structured interviews with 115 participants and their "record-of-work" forms via classroom portfolios in the end of the project. Using the Strauss and Corbin's "grounded theory"(1998), analysis of the data revealed that for the time being, a good number of ESP learners of different majors still wonder what ESP means and what rationale is there behind the program. The main aim of the present study was multifaceted: firstly, to present a critical evaluation of the current situation of teaching ESP in Iran, to widen perspectives to the current problems of ESP individual learners; secondly, to examine the current situation of ESP materials in the Iranian post-secondary institutions; and thirdly, to offer some solutions to the dilemma of ESP program for the betterment of the program in the higher education settings. Finally, the study attempted to give suggestive guidelines to minimize the gap between theory and practice in ESP classrooms in Iranian educational settings.

Keywords: educational settings, ESP, ESP materials, grounded theory, practice, theory